I had an experience today that tuned my heart to the unique grief suffered by those women who’ve lost a husband. Grief like this has been on my heart a lot lately … and other kinds of grief as well. Like the deep, incurable loss my grandparents experienced when their only child, my mother, died unexpectedly at a relatively young age.

To my immense surprise, I came home a few minutes after pondering these things and found that my friend PreacherMike had posted some helpful reflections from a Christianity Today article entitled “The Widow’s Might” by Miriam Neff. Especially helpful are Miriam’s list: Please Do and Please Don’t — suggestions for encouraging widows.

It’s well worth the read.

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I have college friends with tattoos.

I have college friends who write reminders on their hands.

Aaahh, the best of both worlds …

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In my Sunday morning Bible class this past week I mentioned a passage from Simon Winchester’s excellent little book on the great San Francisco earthquake called A Crack in the Edge of the World.

He makes a salient observation about the changing nature of our worldview — and the death of old views — which has direct implications for how we see God working in the world. Referring to the catastrophic earthquake of 1755 in Lisbon, Spain, a mere 150 years before the 1906 earthquake, he tells us a bit about the response to this devastating event:

[G]enerally, rational reaction to that earthquake was minimal: Most of Lisbon displayed the kind of wild primitivism that characterizes a people who are shocked and unprepared and intellectually ill equipped to be able to offer answers as to why a catastrophe like this might have happened. God was responsible, it was widely assumed. Catholic priests roved around the ruins, selecting at random those they believed guilty of heresy and thus to blame for annoying the Divine, who in turn had ordered up the disaster. The priests had them hanged on the spot.

One of the early artistic depictions of the disaster points out the religious interpretation that dominated in the aftermath of the earthquake. This Czech image was published in 1755 with the inscription “The true story of the disastrous earthquake in Lisbon…”. The illustration itself apparently bears no resemblance to the actual city of Lisbon, but notice the themes in the picture. Steeples crumbling, people praying, a cleric running through the streets perhaps pronouncing the judgment of God, and (it appears to me at least) a cultural elite looking notably helpless — standing still, hands uplifted in futility as contrasted with the image of the priest whose hands are turned in such a way as to suggest purpose and deliberate action.

The last of a dying worldview

But the 1755 Lisbon quake was also a turning point of sorts in the history of ideas and worldviews. Well, not so much a turning point as a bit of evidence that another way of seeing the world was possible. In addition to the fanciful, divine retribution drawings like the one above, there were also a set of prints that attempted an accurate portrayal of the destruction.

Pictures that accurately depict the events of November 1st, 1755 are few. Among the best of these are a series of six excellent engravings by Le Bas. … [They are] characterized by a photographic-like accuracy… [and] were probably created late in 1757. … The Le Bas series represents the first instance of exact and systematic documentation of damage caused by an earthquake. Only 28 years later, this method was enriched and improved by F. Schiantarelli, who, together with his colleagues, created 68 excellent engravings of the 1783 Calabrian earthquake. : Source

So in contrast to the mythical depictions attributing the quake to divine caprice, there is an emerging documentary impulse as well, an attempt to chronicle the devastation rather than interpret it. An impulse that would only grow in the coming century and a half.

So that by 1906 …

The old worldview is essentially dead. Again from Winchester:

In San Francisco, a century and a half later, it was all very different…. [T]he new-forming appreciation of science meant that a good number of the city’s inhabitants understood, at least basically, what had just happened. Many of them speculated sensibly and rationally as to why. The official reaction to the disaster was generally swift and measured, ordered and rational….

Lisbon’s disaster, widely regarded as the unstoppable act of a cruel and capricious God, is now largely forgotten. The San Francisco catastrophe … will not be forgotten because, thanks to the growing understanding of science, it became the first seismic event to awaken mankind to the realization that nature’s whims could perhaps be measured, perhaps one day anticipated, then met and overcome. The tragedy led scientists to begin studying the earth with far greater vigor than ever before. It offered the first opportunity for humans to imagine what it might be like if they, and not God or nature, were ever to be in control.

So in the course of time we became a race of scientists. We began — not at that moment or any other particular moment — the relentless pursuit of reliable, repeatable knowledge of our world. Yes, in an attempt to “control” it. Which of course, scares many of us who want to believe that God is the only one truly “in control.”

And yet, it is true, it seems to me that we are all scientists … at least, most of the time.

Which brings me to the news story I saw yesterday

Apparently, some people are still living in a pre-1906 world:

An Israeli MP has blamed parliament’s tolerance of gays for earthquakes that have rocked the Holy Land recently….[saying] the tremors had been caused by lawmaking that gave “legitimacy to sodomy”.

I’m sorry, but that guy is living in a different world from me. His picture of both God and the world is just plain different from mine.

But then again … there was an earthquake in Nevada yesterday. Which must mean there are some sinners out there being punished by God.

Fortunately, we never seem to have earthquakes here in Searcy, AR.

Must be doing everything right!

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You’ll have to forgive me. I had another one of those thoughts today.

You see, I was looking forward to the lunar eclipse tonight. Had plans to go out with friends to watch the spectacular event. It was going to be really cool.

But no. The meteorologists conspired against me. Or meteorology conspired. Or something. Clouds covered all the bases and kept me from enjoying the eclipse that no doubt happened overhead, out beyond and out of view.

So anyway, this left me with one of those uncomfortable thoughts. I wanted to see the eclipse. I wanted the sky to be clear. I wanted the weather to be “better.” Which led me to the place Christians often find themselves … praying for favorable weather.

“Lord, for the church picnic this weekend we ask that it would be just a beautiful day.”

“God the weather outside is threatening to ruin our plans. We pray that the skies would clear for just a bit.”

“Heavenly Father, please divert this horrible hurricane away from our fair city so that we might be spared.”

And this, of course, leads me to my uncomfortable question …

Few Christians I know would hesitate for even a moment to pray that our skies be clear tonight. And none I know would’ve questioned my prayers if I had said, “God please make these clouds go away so we can see the moon.”

But why would we not rather pray, “God please postpone this eclipse until there are clear skies”? Why not ask God to simply stop the moon until the weather was better rather than ask him to make the weather better?

That prayer would never cross our minds. We would never ask the one, but we constantly ask the other.

Are they really different kinds of requests? Is one really harder for God than the other? One more likely to be answered than the other? If I told you that I was praying for the eclipse to wait and a friend of mine was praying for the weather to clear, you’d instantly have an opinion about which prayer was the “safer bet.”

“God, just please stop the moon and the earth, so we can have the eclipse tomorrow.” You’d call me crazy.

So I guess we can add this one to the list of prayers we don’t pray.

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Here’s an interesting little idea produced by Cre8d Design.

It’s designed as an online poll of the world for the upcoming US Presidential election. Votes from the US are counted only in the country-by-country breakdown. The overall tally is meant as a record of what the rest of the world thinks.

There haven’t really been enough “votes” yet to even make this a bad online poll-sized sample. And obviously, it’s not scientific. But it might be interesting to watch as the election season moves forward.

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I was not able to make it over to the nearby campus of Harding University last night. I would’ve loved to attend the Islam in America presentation that Harding hosted, but unfortunately I had a prior commitment. Mark Elrod has full coverage of the event.

There have been some really neat things going on over at Harding lately. The Roosevelt Institution event, Bisons for Obama meetings, an upcoming ASI event with Fred Gray, and the establishment of a student-led fair trade organization, just to name a few.

And that’s not even mentioning the presence of a real SuperBowl champion in chapel.

It’s enough to make a silly old alumnus like me beam with pride.

I think last night’s interfaith dialogue event in particular represents some of the best kind of work an outstanding academic institution can do in educating, clarifying, illuminating, and encouraging healthy understandings among those with whom we share this little planet.

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Early this morning I came across a recent Time magazine interview about heaven with N.T. Wright. He says some things that remind me a lot of my own upbringing in the Churches of Christ, especially clarifying ideas about the “waiting place” (pick your preferred term) between death and resurrection.

But he also does an excellent job of drawing us deeper into the thought-world of ancient christianity:

The New Testament is deeply, deeply Jewish, and the Jews had for some time been intuiting a final, physical resurrection. They believed that the world of space and time and matter is messed up, but remains basically good, and God will eventually sort it out and put it right again. Belief in that goodness is absolutely essential to Christianity, both theologically and morally.

God’s creation is still good. And that goodness is essential. Oops, didn’t hear that much in the church of my experience. He goes on:

Wright: … Much of “traditional” Christianity gives the impression that God has these rather arbitrary rules about how you have to behave, and if you disobey them you go to hell, rather than to heaven. What the New Testament really says is God wants you to be a renewed human being helping him to renew his creation, and his resurrection was the opening bell. And when he returns to fulfil the plan, you won’t be going up there to him, he’ll be coming down here.

TIME: That’s very different from, say, the vision put out in the Left Behind books.

Wright: Yes. If there’s going to be an Armageddon, and we’ll all be in heaven already or raptured up just in time, it really doesn’t matter if you have acid rain or greenhouse gases prior to that. Or, for that matter, whether you bombed civilians in Iraq. All that really matters is saving souls for that disembodied heaven.

And so the resurrection of Jesus and our calling into the life of it, is a kind of firstfruits for the ultimate redemption of God’s good creation.

In a way, it reminds me of a bit from the Bonhoeffer quote I posted yesterday…

“[T]hose who here have utterly renounced [violent possession of the earth] … shall rule the new earth. … [W]hat it means is that when the kingdom of heaven descends, the face of the earth will be renewed, and it will belong to the flock of Jesus.”

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Justin Baeder has tagged me in the 1-2-3 meme. I’ve been reading quite a bit on Bonhoeffer lately, so here’s page 123 from Cost of Discipleship which was sitting on the top of my stack:

“To these, the powerless and the disenfranchised, the very earth belongs. Those who now possess it by violence and injustice shall lose it, and those who here have utterly renounced it, who were meek to the point of the cross, shall rule the new earth. We must not interpret this as a reference to God’s exercise of juridicial punishment within the world, as Calvin did: what it means is that when the kingdom of heaven descends, the face of the earth will be renewed, and it will belong to the flock of Jesus.”

I’ll tag Coleman Yoakum, Shannon Spears, Mark Elrod, James Mills, and Steve Holt. We’ll see what they come up with …

Here’s how it works:
1. Pickup the nearest book (with at least 123 pages)
2. Open to page 123.
3. Find the 5th sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people.

Obviously some quotes will be more profound than others. Some will be downright mundane, but that’s okay.

Play along at home: if you don’t have your own blog, of course, you’re welcome to post whatever quotes you find in the comment thread here.

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I was mostly poking fun at Mike Huckabee in my Sunday post about his reducing all laws to the Big Ten.

But I will say that I am rather unsettled by the language that the Baptist-Republican continues to use in his presidential campaign. Language that seems to reflect a viewpoint commonly called Christian Reconstructionism.

While many Christians believe that biblical law is a guide to morality and public ethics, when interpreted in faith, Reconstructionism is unique in advocating that civil law should be derived from and limited by biblical law.

Certainly, Gov. Huckabee has made a variety of comments implying a similar view of law.

Years ago, C. S. Lewis, one of the 20th Century’s most respected Christian voices tackled the dangers of such a view:

“I am a democrat because I believe that no man or group of men is good enough to be trusted with uncontrolled power over others. And the higher the pretensions of such power, the more dangerous I think it both to rulers and to the subjects.

Hence Theocracy is the worst of all governments.

If we must have a tyrant a robber barron is far better than an inquisitor. The baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity at some point may be sated; and since he dimly knows he is doing wrong he may possibly repent. But the inquisitor who mistakes his own cruelty and lust of power and fear for the voice of Heaven will torment us infinitely more because he torments us with the approval of his own conscience and his better impulses appear to him as temptations.

And since Theocracy is the worst, the nearer any government approaches to Theocracy the worse it will be.

A metaphysic held by the rulers with the force of a religion, is a bad sign. It forbids them, like the inquisitor, to admit any grain of truth or good in their opponents, it abrogates the ordinary rules of morality, and it gives a seemingly high, super-personal sanction to all the very ordinary human passions by which, like other men, the rulers will frequently be actuated.

In a word, it forbids wholesome doubt.

A political programme can never in reality be more than probably right. We never know all the facts about the present and we can only guess the future. To attach to a party programme — whose highest claim is to reasonable prudence — the sort of assent which we should reserve for demonstrable theorems, is a kind of intoxication,” - C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms,

On a tangentially related topic, I hope to have time to attend the ASI presentation by David Barton at Harding University tonight.

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I just saw a clip of presidential candidate Mike Huckabee speaking today at Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, VA (the church of the late Jerry Falwell) in which Huckabee offers an interesting commentary on law and morality:

“Frankly, we really don’t need a lot of law if we are people of morality,” he said to the congregation of over 7,000. “There are only ten basic laws that we need. If you think about it, the Ten Commandments cover it all.”

It prompted me to make a quick mental list of people who’d be kinda surprised by this observation from the baptist-presidential preacher-candidate:

1. Jewish rabbis — who would number the list of laws at, um, I dunno, like 613.

2. His Fellow Americans — who’d likely be uneasy with Mr. Huckabee’s suggestion that we should simply revise the constitution to make it comply with God’s law.

3. Moses — who must have been disappointed that God kept rambling on and on and on about ‘laws’ even after he gave that quick list of Ten.

4. My Old Testament students — who’ve spent the past couple weeks reading all of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers. They’re gonna be really upset with me when they hear that Mr. Huckabee thinks Ten Laws was enough.

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I’ve gotten several hits recently to a particular post that left me wondering. The post itself isn’t even worthy of attention; it’s just one of my series of “family photos.” But apparently the image itself is desirable enough.

So, I figured it out. If you go to Google Images and search for the terms “mustache kid”, this is what you get.

The sixth item in the Google results is a picture of my son Connor. The internets are a weird place.

________________
UPDATE (Feb. 10, 2008): He’s up to No. 1 now. Way to go Connor!

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Okay. Now I’m getting excited. I can hear people talking about it. And I know others are looking forward to it. When I have my copy of Irresistable Revolution out, someone will strike up a conversation that leads to information about Shane’s visit.

I spoke to someone on campus today who was reading Shane’s book. When I asked her if she knew Shane was coming to town she replied, “Yes … shhhh.” (It’s apparent to me now that we’re all pretty bad at secrets.)

I told her that it was all out in the open now and she could tell anybody she wanted.

More Details

I promised more specific (and more accurate) details so I’ve put up a page with all that stuff — specific times, locations, maps, etc. You can find all the info you need here.

Remember, this event is Saturday & Sunday, December 8-9. Which is not THIS weekend, but NEXT weekend. (Unless of course, you have a different way of using the words “this” and “next” when talking about days of the week. In which case, I can’t help you. Just add the dates to your calendar. That should cover us.)

Anyway, all the specifics are on the event page. Feel free to share it with others.

Who’s Responsible?

So who’s organizing this event? Well, it might be fun to have you believe it was me … all me. But it’s not. A number of people have been involved in this process. Praying. Talking. Dreaming. Struggling with the opportunity. And I’m thankful to be one of those.

More than that, I’m thankful for all those men and women who’ve joined in the conversation around this event — the promise and possibility of it, the challenge and uncertainty that it presents us with, the fear and discomfort that it uncovers, and the imagination and creativity that it has sparked. All these people and more are allies with us in helping to be formed by the message of Jesus into kingdom communities.

For this particular event, the main group is just a bunch of folks like you, folks you’d know — ordinary believers with ordinary names.

Names like Don & Kirk and Will & Laramie. (So, some names are more ordinary than others.)

Those aren’t their real names, of course. If they want to say who they are, I’ll let them do it. (And honestly, those superhero names were chosen poorly and don’t do a very good job of obscuring their secret identities.)

Please pass the word around.

We’ve committed to a kind of low-profile approach to this visit. We’re pretty much willing to let word of mouth and the spirit determine who knows about it. We trust that those who come will be blessed and those who will benefit from being present will find out through our sharing it with them.

So tell them about it. Or send them to this post or to the event page where they can find all the details. Or even better … just have a few friends over to your place for a simple meal on December 8, then put them in your car and carry them to Riverview High School to join us in our conversation about the kingdom of God.

And pray that this will be an event that is focused not so much on one guy or his notoriety, but on the One Man who is our Teacher and his message of hope for us all.

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